I’ve been seeing a lot of speculation on what the next adaptation could be, and how it’s going to blend into this universe, and thought I’d throw my dream into the mix.

I admit, I really want Domino/Pemberley/Lizzie be involved in the creation of the new series, and for us to be able to keep up a little with Lizzie, Darcy, Gigi and Fitz specifically (as Pemberley employees/vlogging mentors/etc) throughout the adaptation. And therefore see a wedding play out, even if we don’t get to see everything we so obviously want to. ;)

(Or, alternately, I also saw someone post that they wanted to see/hear about Darcy proudly sitting at Lizzie’s thesis defense, which would be just as awesome.)

In terms of the next book, I was excited to see LM Montgomery tossed into the ring by Bernie. Anne is everyone’s favorite (mine included, let’s be honest), and I would be so delighted with her, or with Emily. But my top choice for LMM would be The Blue Castle. It’s the story of Valancy, a mousy twentysomething who is pretty much entirely submissive to her bitchy, overbearing family, until she goes to the doctor and learns that her heart is failing and she has one year left to live. She decides to really live that year, breaks out of the mold her family has her in, makes her own choices, takes a job her family is horrified by and marries the guy she has a crush on but her family/town hates (with him full knowing she’s going to die).

It’s got a small scope of characters, and a character who is convinced she is going to die is not going to have many qualms about what she shares on the internet. It’s got romance, humor, strong female relationships and a woman taking control of her life. There are definite challenges involved in adapting it, but I think it would be pretty damn amazing to see. Anne’s my favorite, but Valancy is the one I understand the most.

Yesssss!!!! I was just making a post about how much I love The Blue Castle, and I decided to check tags to see if anybody else was writing about it. This would be amazing. They’ll probably go with something more well known, but I could totally see this working in the vlog format.

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and this is my year of living dangerously.”

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I’m about to start living life to the fullest.”

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I am going to die.”

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and I may have just made the biggest mistake of my life.”

“My name is Valancy Stirling, and this is my bucket list.”

Seriously though, I could definitely see Valancy creating some kind of bucket list and making vlogs to update the world on her success. Maybe a vlog (or, honestly, even just a blog?) would be on her bucket list.

If Bernie Su doesn’t do this, anyone want to co-opt it????

That really does sound fantastic. I would so love to see that. And yeah, if Hank and Bernie don’t do it, I would love to see someone else give it a shot.

One of the really interesting things about LBD is how inexpensive it was to produce. I mean, it was expensive by the standards of people on YouTube, but compared to big-budget (or even small-budget) TV shows, it was incredibly cheap. Bernie Su has said the whole series was shot using an $800 camera and a $100 microphone. There were no licensing fees, since the original work is out of copyright. Locations and costumes were cheap, since the story was set in a contemporary bedroom. They didn’t need stunts or special effects. There wasn’t much editing. They didn’t do marketing. There weren’t any distribution costs.

There was time and effort for the people involved. They paid a relatively small amount (I assume) for the writers, transmedia, and production people. And I assume they paid a somewhat larger amount for professional actors.

And unless I’m missing something, that was pretty much it.

What that means is that putting on a show like this is within the financial reach of anyone who’s sufficiently motivated. That’s one of the things that has frustrated me about some of the criticism of LBD that I’ve seen: If you don’t like the creative choices they made in putting on this show, you’re not limited to carping about it on Tumblr. You can make your own show. You can go beyond complaining, and actually fix the thing that bothers you.

Of course, actually creating a compelling artistic work in a collaborative medium like this is a lot more complicated than just criticizing story choices after the fact. You’d have to find people willing to collaborate with you, and communicate a vision that was compelling enough to bring them along. You’d have to find, and presumably pay, decent actors. You’d have to come up with some money (not much, but some).

It would probably be a lot more work, and a much more deferred payoff, than the immediate gratification of picking apart someone else’s creation. But there’d be an actual creation of your own at the end of the process.

I think the Anton Ego speech is relevant:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends… Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Some of the people who’ve been critical of the LBD team’s creative choices have come up with some really awesome-sounding ideas for how the show could have been better. And look: If Hank and Bernie and company could do this, and be as successful as they have been even with all their shortcomings and problematic choices, how much more awesome (or at least, differently awesome) could your version of LBD have been?

This entry was posted by jbc
on Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Tumblr.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.